


cracked glass, stone, and steel

by regispectre



Category: Inazuma Eleven
Genre: Ableist Language, Abuse, Death, Dissociation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Football | Soccer, Gen, POV Second Person, Physical Abuse, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Hatred, Slurs, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 17:43:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3177800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regispectre/pseuds/regispectre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You will never be as pathetic as your older brother. You will never be as weak as your older brother, even if you are a constant failure who desperately clings to this world because you can’t move on past death. You sharpen your tongue on your teeth and convince yourself you can taste blood.  / atsuya's pov, episodes 41-42 with some game plot elements.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cracked glass, stone, and steel

**Author's Note:**

> very old work. i wrote it in 2013, but never posted it in its entirety before.  
> please refer to the tags for content warnings. regarding the warnings "emotional/psychological abuse" and "physical abuse," note that this fic is told from the point of view of the abuser in question.

The digital watch your brother wears beeped 23:00 an hour ago. The rest of the team that you’ve stuck with (you cannot call them _your_ team) filed out of the training centre two hours before that. You can feel Shirou’s joints creaking in protest at his body’s constant movement – his spine sits uncomfortably below his shoulder blades, which are poised to erupt out of his back, and the muscles in his calves are frantic with exhaustion. You are unbalanced on his sore feet and his cleats stink. His toes are bruised. Each of your steps trigger a landslide of aches and pains up and down your brother's body. 

He’s been pleading with you for some time now: “Please, _please,_ Atsuya, we need to get some sleep. The match is early tomorrow morning. I won’t be able to walk, _or_ run, _or_ kick. Let us go.”

Please, Atsuya. Please let us lose the match, Atsuya. Please let us be unprepared, Atsuya. You do not even answer him. You take a running start even though his breath is thin and ragged in his living lungs.

You experience what happens after only dimly: his foot connects with the ball which slams into the dummy-Keeper and knocks it down, then spirals into the goal, coming to rest inches beyond the line. You do not even feel the satisfaction you should. You are wearing your brother’s fatigue like an old coat – too tight, too warm, and too thick, and you only feel all his muscles strain against your tyranny.

“You, stay _quiet_ ,” you say. Your voice rasps out of his throat like an unwanted visitor who’s been turned out into the streets. Your brother starts in his corner of your shared mind. “Pay attention! We need all the training we can get, Shirou, and I’m – "

Shirou never gets to hear exactly what you are; there are voices in the corridor and light, cheery footsteps that echo off the walls. Your brother’s lips are set in a grim line on the face you’re borrowing, and when your team captain pokes his head to ask if you (two) are alright, and a manager nods along concernedly behind him, you cannot be stopped from snarling. You snap your head around to face him and your brother’s features are contorted in the kind of deep rage that doesn’t suit him at all.

Suddenly your brother’s saliva is sour in your throat and your brother’s heart is beating ten thousand times a minute and is white-hot and sharp against his ribs.

You feel yourself ebb from the body even as you notice this. You are cast off from him like old snakeskin, left to lie in a rumpled heap next to the living creature that rejected you. You hear your brother’s voice, calm and reassuring. “Yes, Captain,” he says, not sounding at all like someone put through the meat grinder and spat out in rough chunks. “I’ll be heading to bed now.” He pauses. Smiles. “Thanks for dropping by.”

Your brother sags against the wall as Captain Endou takes his leave in the friendly, good-natured manner he is known for, and you don’t stop Shirou from leaving the facility to go shower and collapse. You only half-wish your brother had gathered enough courage to kick you out of control, and for the rest of the night your thoughts are a messy mix of conflicting emotions because of this.

The next day’s dawn brings you no refreshment; you do not marvel at the light blue haze that comes just after the sunrise, nor do you bask in awe of the gentle sunshine as it threads itself through the cracks in the clouds. You have spent the last six hours with something that accurately mimics a heart in your throat and your fingers curling and uncurling expectantly. You sometimes resent how your brother sleeps and you cannot.

The team takes a groggy breakfast, then, almost before they have truly woken themselves up, goes together to the training centre for a final run of its obstacle course.

The course consists of a labyrinthine series of connected rooms. Some are empty save a football field, where the team often decides to play a practice match instead of taking a break, while others contain strange technological innovations such as a treadmill that imitates rough and rocky landscapes by throwing strange bumps at those who run on it. Many times you’ve marveled at just how much the world has changed since you’ve last been on it; some of these things just seem _impossible._

Today, however, you do not speak, even when spoken to, nor do you attempt to force your brother out control. Shirou, short of breath and still aching from yesterday’s ordeal, very quietly comments that you’re being unnaturally sullen. You don’t acknowledge this. You would be pacing like a caged animal if you could walk on your own.

Something is _wrong_ , something in the texture of the air as it curls around your non-flesh and mingles with your smoke fingers. It feels as if you are drifting through the aftermath of a thousand gunshots.

The team clears the next-to-last room of strange contraptions and finishes a practice match in high spirits, patting each other on the back in happy exultation on their progress. If you weren’t so stubbornly unpleasant today you would join them; they’re not a bad lot, they’re hard workers, and they’ve been improving steadily since you first met them. It wouldn’t matter, anyway, even if you felt as good as they do – nobody can hear you except Shirou unless he lends you his mouth.

Captain Endou pushes open the next door almost carelessly, still laughing.  He has his face turned toward the team - but when the great double doors finally swing forward, you are not looking at the him, who has frozen midway through their movements, their victory slipping off them like oil. You are not even looking at the room beyond them, which up until now held nothing but hypothetical promise, nothing at all out of the ordinary.

You are looking past Endou, who is turning his head to face the final room in slow-motion. You are looking past team is running past their captain like swarming ants into the room in slow-motion and your coach’s face contorting into an ugly expression of shock and horror in _slow-fucking-motion_. You are looking at the tall man with the captain’s armband and the red eyes and you are seething with more hate than you can swallow down without burning your throat.

The team’s opponents have come early.

 

This is the worst impromptu match you have ever taken part in. Epsilon set the terms for it, Epsilon sprung it on you without warning, Epsilon lured you into this goddamned training centre and trapped you into the final room and forced your brother’s teammates into position like you all are nothing but a freak sideshow on display for Epsilon’s amusement _._ Like you have never been anything but a distraction that they’d like to punt through a couple of flaming hoops until you keel over and die again. 

You are not coherent enough to give your brother the usual pre-match pep talk. Besides, you don’t need to tell him what to do and what signals to wait for this time. He’s almost tenser than you are – he doesn’t like Epsilon’s captain either – and you don’t need to do something irreparable to him like you’re constantly afraid that you will.  

The score is tied at 0 – 0. One of those alien fucks has already tried to score a goal and failed; this lifted your spirits, so you feel now less like a frustrated mess of tangled wire sparking weakly with electricity. You still only manage to half convince yourself that it is scientifically impossible for you to feel an itch crawling up your skin.

Kidou has the ball.

He and Ichinose Kazuya run up, following two parallel paths that intersect only when he and Kidou initiate a complicated series of passes that end with a powerful dual shot at the goal. Your mouth tightens along with your fists and your ribcage – and you watch as the ball makes heavy contact with Epsilon’s Keeper. He lets the ball shatter into the ground just before the goal line like a meteor crashing and creating a crater on the moon.

“Desarm,” you say savagely, confining your whisper to Shirou’s range of hearing, “is a pompous asshole.”

Shirou’s mouth sort of quirks upward, but he only says “I know” before he dashes off again, only a bit ungainly in his worn-out cleats. His eyes look very, very tired, and very, very dull, like he's only half-seeing everything. 

You’ve noticed he’s been doing that often - running away from you, avoiding your conversations.

You guess this means your plan is working, but this thought tastes bitter anyway.

You’re ruminating over this so much that you almost forget to watch the progress of the match. It’s only when you realize that your brother is on the opposite side of the pitch from you that you remember that you’re supposed to be keeping an eye on him, making sure that he’s alright.

Shirou has the ball.

He rears up, less like a wolf and more like a leopard, angled towards the goal, breaking through Epsilon’s defense, blocking passes and launching himself through their ranks. He is the bullet and his team is the gun – he is the grenade and they are the bombers, and he gets the credit when it’s all over. But it’s you who is the final blow.

You can feel your face pulling into a grin before you know it, and you’re perfectly poised to explode into position, scattering collateral damage and the broken shards of Desarm’s defense on the field, but Shirou is taking the ball up without you, and Shirou is aiming his kick, and the loud roaring noises in your ears are not that of applause, but of disbelief.

What is this _idiot_ trying to do?

You would reach out and grab his shoulders, turn him around, and scream at him if you could, but your empty hands claw at empty space, and Shirou still sends the ball flying at the net even as you’re thinking poison into his brain.

The shot staggers even before Desarm reaches to pluck it out of the air like falling fruit. It trips in the net’s general direction, unstable and unsteady, and is dead in Desarm’s hands. The heart drips out of your throat like molasses. Shirou looks as if his bones are too weak to lift him up. 

“ _What was that?”_ you hiss, but Shirou doesn’t hear it – it only mingles dimly with all the other hushed sounds of shock and disappointment that come rushing down the field like a locust infestation.

“No – Fubuki, missing a shot?”

“Impossible, this can’t –"

“How can we possibly win without his kicking power?”

Your captain calls over the field, determinedly optimistic. He says they’re going to be fine. The score is still tied, after all, anything can happen in the second half of the match!

The temperature seems to have dropped ten degrees. Shirou is shivering in place, knocked off-balance by the recoil from the shot, by the words _how could we possibly win without –_ still echoing around. You don’t offer him a hand. The wall that has been building up between you two as of late wouldn’t crack if you took the full force of a tornado to it.

“Don’t try to borrow my moves. Stick to your own,” you tell him firmly. You are trying very hard not to sneer at him, but you can’t help but think that it fucking serves him right that he can’t pull off your shot. He can’t rely on your power forever.

And in order to hammer this lesson in, you shriek through the barriers your brother has set up between you and his mind. You fight tooth and nail with his grey matter and neural tissue until it’s in shreds at your feet and you can stretch his arms and flex his legs and flick his fingers. Your spirit is made of cracked glass, stone, and steel, swept together by the blizzard now rushing through his blood vessels. You are feather-light and invincible. There is nothing to pull you down.

Shirou’s cowering in a mixture of anger and insecurity in the back of his own mind and he hates it – you would hate it too, perhaps more than he does, if your circumstances were reversed. But you can’t go through this match without getting a chance to have Desarm lick your heels – your heels, not Shirou’s. It doesn’t matter that none of this people will ever know your name. You just need – _need_ – to make your mark, even as someone else.

Your brother’s eyes lift as you will them to; his vision is sharp and focused. The field has narrowed down: you see one straight path, leading up to the goal, and Desarm’s smug face at the end of it. You can only barely hear some guy from your team, Kidou, you think, calling out, telling you this is reckless and stupid, but you don’t care. You don’t _care_.

You put all your power into this volley. You aim it straight at Desarm’s head. For three seconds you are absolutely sure that you've won it. You’re absolutely sure you’re going to be revered for this, that this is the shot that gets you into the history books, that this is the one that closes the match and sets Epsilon running out in retreat. Desarm’s hands move. He’s not going to make it. Nobody can hold Eternal Blizzard. You hit the floor hard and you’re ready for the _thwack_ of the ball in the net -

Desarm laughs at you, and the ball falls from his palms onto the ground again before he kicks it back on the field.

Those three seconds? They crumble into dust.

“That’s the spirit!” he tells you, and his voice is brimming with the glory you can’t reach. “Attack with more passion – I’ve never felt this good in a match!”

Your hold on Shirou’s body slips and you stumble out of him like someone hit you on the head.

The whispers are starting up again. Your brother’s teammates stone you with their lack of confidence and anxiety. “You should have been able to do it, Atsuya,” they say, only they add the wrong name onto the end and you don’t matter, because all you did was let them down. Why should they even bother remembering your name anyway? You have never mattered.

You _should_ have been able to do it.

What kind of shithead are you, not even being able to _score?_

You need to try it again. You need to redeem yourself.

You hook your fingers into claws and tear your way through Shirou’s mental defenses until you’re sitting pretty in his throne and Desarm throws the ball out to Epsilon’s three-top.

“Get a goal in!” he says to them, his face fucking _radiant_ with confidence and superiority. “Your time limit is 7.4 seconds, now _run!_ ”

The bile rises in your brother’s throat and his head is pounding as you speed up across the field. Shirou is screaming in your ear – Kidou and the others are screaming in your ear – fucking everyone slams their words through your head and they’re all words you don’t want to hear: “FUBUKI, GET BACK IN DEFENSIVE POSITION! _THEY’RE ABOUT TO SCORE!”_

You are ready to kill someone.

Kabeyama puts his impressive girth between Epsilon and the goal but they pass around him, the ball rebounding quickly off their feet until they’re past him and he’s left bewildered in their trail.

Kogure darts forward through the ranks and slips under the Epsilon guy’s feet, pulling some pretty neat acrobatics until his balance slips and Epsilon charges past him until he’s a crumpled heap lying in the dust without the ball.

You have fallen way behind – you’re only two-thirds up the field from your goal and even as your mouth quirks in disgust at your brother’s teammates the alien team shoots.

Mamoru Endou extends his palms and plants his feet.

The force of Epsilon’s shoot rocks him backwards, but he holds true. You find your face breaking into a relaxed, easy smile - titans could rise up from underground and Endou would still protect his goal.

The whistle blows. The match is tied, with no points on each side. Not good, but there’s still time, still time to sweep Epsilon off their feet and out of this earth for good. You’ve still got a chance to crush Desarm between your fingers. This isn’t over.

The tension drains from the field until Shirou’s teammates are less like the walking dead and more like the upbeat group of teenagers they were before. Endou gives his usual half-time pep talk, soothing bruised egos and still managing not to lie straight to their faces. You drift almost carelessly until you hear it, vaguely, from miles away – “Shirou, you’re in charge of both defense and offense from now on.”

Your brother pulls a reassuring smile onto his face and then drops it as if it’s too heavy to hold with both his hands. He directs his body to the bathrooms tacked onto the sides of the building with trembling limbs. You stick to him like a gust of smoke curled under his nostrils. The scene is achingly familiar: Shirou, hunched over as if he doesn’t want to be seen, his fingers on the doorknob, and you slipping into the room just after he’s closed the door. What follows is a ritual neither of you truly want to partake in, one that involves shouting matches with the two of you separated by a thin pane of glass - but you don’t think you can let him out of your sight, especially if he’s this upset.

Shirou turns on the tap in the bathroom sink and locks the door behind him.  He splashes his face once, then twice, and then grips the cold linoleum until shadows sneak in the spaces between his knuckles and the skin just under his bones is red in the light. He focuses on his reflection with a mixture of apprehensive expectancy and dread, and when the man in the mirror doesn’t morph into you, he almost sighs in relief.

“I can do this on my own,” he says to himself, and he says it with such conviction you feel a burst of pride cut through your chest. “I’m going to make the shots today. I _have_ to. I don’t need to let him take over.”

You decide not to bring him down today. His face is haggard and pale enough, and the rings under his eyes are enough to weigh all of him down. He is a young man dragging the chains of a ghost.

You don’t want to know what he’s thinking in the space between the last thing he’s said and him adjusting that scarf he wears so that it doesn’t strangle him like you do. He focuses very hard on his eyes, as if to remind himself that they are his own and not glowing golden with the heat of the underworld.

“I’ll be perfect,” he says.

This is what you’ve made him become.

Shirou checks his watch, straightens his back, and squares his shoulders before walking out of the bathroom.  The sink is overflowing with water.

 

Two minutes later Shirou adeptly steals the ball from Epsilon and then you promptly barrel through him, knocking him out of his body and fitting yourself into his shape.

You’ve given him his time in the spotlight, and the team needs you to score goals, so it’s not like he can complain. You let him pound his fists at the walls you’ve put up around central command and dash forward. You’re faster than everyone else on this team.

“Pass the ball, Fubuki, you’re going to be—"

Will Kidou ever just shut _up?_

An Epsilon defender who towers at least a foot above your head blocks your path with one of the most annoying smirks you’ve ever seen and you wish you could take a couple of seconds to reach up and punch it off his face. “Get out of the way!” you snarl at him, then you take great pleasure in darting to the side in a motion almost like skipping and you’re past him, with a clear shot at the goal.

And this is it. You are going to blow Desarm over.

Your brother’s feet scratch hard at the dirt as you buck up and kick your volley at him. The air is cool and thin as it knifes through your brother’s lungs and you land hard, panting, and when Desarm leans back on his haunches and brings his hands out to try to catch the ball you can’t wait for the look on his face when he realizes that this is a shot he can’t block.

The look never comes. Even as Kazemaru comments, awestruck, that your kick looked stronger than before, Desarm saves it easily and lets the ball crash into the ground in front of the net with a mixture of disappointment and pride.

“ _Damn it!”_

He looks up at that, smiles at you, you’re about to be sick.

“Keep it up, Fubuki,” he says, with unaffected delight, like you fucking knew he would. He always does, always says that you’re what’s making this game even the slightest bit interesting for him, and you think he can just go die in a hole somewhere for that. “Fire up my fighting spirit!”

“Like hell I’d do that for you!” you yell back at him.

Shirou takes advantage of this momentary lapse in your concentration to slip in and silently fill his body with his own presence. You are put gently to the side like a rag doll that has seen better days and Shirou calls out an apology and sprints back into the defensive position just in time to stop Epsilon from attempting another shot at the goal. Epsilon’s three-top cuts a wide path through the field and Shirou stands firm in his defensive position until you knock him off his feet with a wave of your bitterness.

“Step off, Shirou, you aren’t wanted here –"

“No, _you_ stay out, _you stay out!"_

His eyes close tight against you and Epsilon dashes past him while he cowers there like some sort of idiot.

You scoff at him as he twists around in surprise and shame and that Kogure kid from before jumps up to try to salvage the remains of the crappy defensive job your brother put up but one of the Epsilon players aims the shot past him, and he stumbles back into the goal and knocks straight into Endou, and they crumple together as the shot rockets into the net, hot with friction. The kid’s limbs are twisted in ways they shouldn’t be and your captain looks bruised something fierce.

The field has gone silent in horror. The guilt that’s building up in your brother is almost enough to drown him, and you don’t even need to hold his head under the water. He’s choking enough.

Endou gets to his feet and Kogure winces when he puts a forgiving hand on the younger kid’s shoulder. You turn your attention away from them and look back at the scoreboard.

The score is 1 – 0, in favour of the most disgusting team you’ve ever played, and you almost claw your brother’s eyes out in frustration.

The match goes on with neither side letting the other so much get close to the goal. Shirou runs around leaving the opposing team frozen as he takes the ball only to have someone else tackling him for possession. They’ll make off with it for a couple of seconds only for Domon Asuka to slide the ball out from under the Epsilon player’s foot. Kidou calls out directions and Endou calls out encouragement and it goes on and on. Kogure redeems himself with blocking another shot and the next time Shirou has the ball you remember how carefully he pulled you out of control the last time and all your thoughts turn rotten, like spoiling milk.

This kind pity – for you did detect pity in that expulsion of you from his mind – is harder on you than anything else in this match. You are not to be fucking pitied. You’re not the kid who’s been relying on a shadow of his younger twin brother to help him get through life for the last seven years. This tense anger propels you towards your brother’s body and you batter at his mind with the force of your existence. _C’mon, little piggy, won’t you let me in?_

“No, Atsuya,” he shoots back at you with a furious whisper. His eyes are screwed closed in pain. “No, no, no, stay out of this, I said I would do this by myself, I don’t _need you_ , get out, get out, get out –” His voice rises hysterically. “ _Get out and stay out!”_

“No chance, brother,” you think at him, brimming with bravado and an emotion uncomfortably like desperation.  “Not until you make me.”

You’re less malicious this time. You overlap your consciousness with his and then edge him out bit by bit, until the body is yours and only yours. The ball finds its way to your feet and you dribble up the field with your eyesight sharp and a tundra in your chest where your heart should be. Your foot is cold as you aim the ball at Desarm’s goal and kick, and this absolutely has to work, absolutely has to, you have no idea how you could face anyone if it doesn’t –

And Desarm stretches out his hands and the ball rockets straight toward them, and it rolls against his palms with its final dying spurts of energy, and your shoulders sag and you are not going to cry.

The ball thuds onto the field again with even more force than it usually does but the sound of the world cracking is drowned out by your voice. You shriek your fury at the high, domed ceiling with balled fists. You scream curses that burn like acid, like vomit, and your eyes must look positively inhuman.

The rest of the team is watching you concernedly. Their stares are pointed and confused – you can’t blame them; you’ve always been a bit of a wildcard, but this, this is the worst you’ve ever been on the field. You clamp your mouth shut and shove yourself back into the game with a vengeance.

You weave in and out of lines of players, and it doesn’t matter what uniform they are wearing – you have no teammates. You have no support. You’re a disappointment to every one of them anyway, and it’s not like you need any of them. You just need the ball and a clear chance at a shot. You have never had teammates. Who did you think you were kidding?

Shirou tentatively pokes a hole into your flawless line of reasoning. “It’s not your fault, Atsuya,” he says, and you bristle at him. “Atsuya, nobody has been able to beat Epsilon, it’s not because you’re too—"

You cannot fucking stand how kind his voice can be.

 “Oh no, of course not, of _course_ it’s not my fault! It’s because _you’re too weak_ and you know it!”

That shuts him up fast.

“If you trained more, if you just let us train harder, we wouldn’t be stuck in this situation right now,” you spit harshly, and your feet – no, your brother’s feet, you’ve nearly forgotten that you’re not really the owner of this body – slow to a stop in the middle of the field. “Didn’t I tell you yesterday? It was stupid for you to tell me to stop training, and you’re reaping your rewards now!”

Shirou doesn’t try to talk to you for the rest of the match.

You get a move on; you can’t stay in one place for too long in a soccer match. Rika and Ichinose sprint up the field, passing the ball between the two of them, and you shoulder past them, shoving them apart, and gain possession as you do.

“Watch it, you—"

You don’t have time for their self-righteous rage. You slip through Epsilon’s defense, shut down everything that’s unnecessary, wall off all those thoughts that tangle over each other like tentacles and leave them to fight each other to the death. You shut out the voices of anyone but yourself; what does it matter if the rest of the team thinks you’ve gone mental? It’s cold hell on the field and Desarm looks straight down at you from his pedestal and all but invites you to come and get him.

You’re going to crack his little marble podium and watch him come tumbling down. You are going to spit on each of the pieces he will break into.

“I’m going to get you this time, Desarm!” you roar at him, and a tornado is tearing through your brother’s limbs and you lift your foot from the ground and kick –

\- and then Shirou chooses the absolute worst time in history to break his silence.

“Atsuya, don’t be reckless, aim properly!”

“Don’t" - your teeth are gritted and your brother’s head is echoing with the storm that lifts up your heart and almost makes it beat – “ _tell me what to do!”_

You shoot from the centre of the pitch this time, and you shoot hard and fast and focused. When your foot connects with the ball it’s like Singularity exploded into ice and snow instead of heat. A universe is born as you kick the ball and it’s a universe expanding too fast for Desarm to contain.

The ball grazes the tips of his fingers and he almost holds it before it shatters past his hands and falls into the net gracefully, like it was guided by some unseen hand. Maybe if you believed in God, that would be it. But you don’t care for that right now. You’re trembling all over. You’re trembling all over and you’re smiling hard enough for your face to smash in two.

Endou is the one who breaks the spell. He pumps his fist in the air, bounding on the balls of his feet, and he makes sure the whole field knows: “He did it! He got past Desarm’s defense!”

And you lift your face to the sky in victory and the whole team rushes to you in exultation. You’re trapped in a whirlwind of admiration and people congratulating you on the best damn job ever done. The world outside you is gold, even if your spirit is damp and decomposing; you won against Desarm. You’re _better_ than Desarm.

The look on his face, his eyes upturned in shock and his fingers unsteady, is even better than you imagined.

Desarm, for his part, simply says “How – _interesting_ ,” before motioning his team into formation. The players on your side scramble into their proper position too, their movements still brimming with excitement and happiness - that _you_ gave them. You’ve tied the score, now you just need to get another goal in and the match is yours.

Epsilon kicks off then ricochets down the field like comets and your brother’s fellow defenders can’t stop them in time – these guys are angry and they’ve got a grudge to settle. That thought makes you almost unbearably cheerful. They put all the power they can into their shot and send it flying.

Captain Endou assumes a fighting stance and widens the difference between his knees as he leans forward. He isn’t even rocked backwards by the impact. It is with tremendous satisfaction that you watch him throw the ball back onto the pitch. You intercept it as it soars toward you then quickly turn and burn a hole through Epsilon’s defense.

You’re not half as tense as you were last time. The adrenaline rush has abated; you are filled not with hard spikes and nails but a relaxed sense of certainty you haven’t enjoyed for a while. This doesn’t stop your brother’s feet from pounding hard on the ground as you run, nor his fists from clenching so hard that you’re sure you’re leaving cuts on his palms. You take aim and fire.

“This is the last one, Desarm!” You throw your voice down the pitch along with your shot. Shirou has crawled out of the corner of his mind to watch; he looks way too worried about what you’re doing and your ease dissipates. You bite the inside of your brother’s mouth.

Desarm takes a wildly different stance this time, reaching high up with both his hands and bringing his fists down on the ball like a judge pounding the gavel.

He is not trembling, he does not look shaken in the least.

And your ball ends up caught firmly between his outstretched fingers.

He’s blocked it, even if that should be impossible. Even if that doesn’t make any sense. He’s blocked it.

It has gone very quiet inside of you all of a sudden, and even Shirou is silent and drawn.

Rika and Kidou run up behind you to tighten up the offensive line and intercept the ball if Desarm sends it out back into the field, but he doesn’t. He smiles very politely and looks at the ball almost as if it’s a treasured keepsake, a family heirloom he’s finally gotten his hands on.

“To think you had me go that far! Nobody else has made me joy a match as much as you have!”

He carelessly tosses the ball out of bounds.

“This is the end of the match.”

You almost don’t notice your captain running up from the goal. He stands beside you with fists raised. “What? What are you talking about! You can’t end a match on your own—"

“He’s right,” says the bus driver, sounding utterly confused. He has his sleeve pulled up and he’s staring intently at the silver wristwatch he wears. “There actually isn’t any time left.”

His voice trails off and dies under the team’s disbelieving stares.

There is no longer anything within you. There are no bells resounding with glory. There is no kingdom. There is no crown.

The score is 1 – 1, and you have failed.

Desarm turns his back on your brother’s teammates and beckons his team to him. “Epsilon! We’re withdrawing!”

The Epsilon players chorus their assent and file out like soldiers behind their general. They walk out the stadium like they’ve crushed you under their heels and forced you to bow before them in defeat, like they didn’t meet their match at all. The rhythm of their footsteps snaps you out of your stupor and your brother’s limbs crack with how fast you move them forward.

“No, Fubuki—"

 _“Don’t give me that bullshit, Desarm!”_ you scream, and you know how bad this looks. You don’t care how many people are staring. Captain Endou takes off after you and throws his arms around your brother’s middle, holding you back. You knock him in the face with an elbow trying to struggle free. Your voice reaches a hysterical pitch and you’re yelling yourself hoarse.

“I’m not done with you! _Don’t run away, do you hear me?_ DON’T RUN AWAY FROM ME!”

“Fubuki, stop!” Endou says sharply. Desarm turns his head back toward you and favours you with a shadow of a condescending glance.

“This will not be the last time we play against you. We shall meet you in battle with our full power,” he says with all the air of a nobleman addressing a beggar while stepping into his horse-drawn fucking carriage. He and his team disappear in the violent haze that obscures your vision and summons them every time they’ve got to disappear, and, in time, their strict footsteps fade. You are no longer screaming. You are no longer anything.

Captain Endou has unhanded you. Your soul drains out of the body painfully, catching on Shirou’s sharp edges and tearing as it falls away from your brother’s flesh. You are a crumpled heap hanging dead in the air, a locked safe with a hole in its side where Desarm hit you with a metal bat.

“Hey,” Endou says, his voice uncharacteristically careful. “You okay, Fubuki?”

You’re not even looking at them.

It takes a while for Shirou to find his voice. He answers very faintly, without emotion, “Yeah. It’s nothing,” and then, even fainter, “Sorry I couldn’t get in another point.”

You would take this as a personal insult if Shirou didn’t sound so broken as he said it. He drags himself off the pitch as if he was a walking corpse. His eyes look like the charred remains of something ravaged by fire and he keeps his back to his team so they won’t notice.

“But we couldn’t have gotten a tie without you!” Endou says incredulously, his voice admiring and clear and not at all like yours or Shirou’s. “It’s thanks to you that we even got this far! Thanks, Fubuki!”

Your brother – the charmer, the cheerful one, the one everyone always liked better – lifts his hand up listlessly in reply, then drops it like an anchor. His palm is scabbing over and there are slivers of skin under his nails.

 

As you thought, he was headed to the bathrooms.

He only remembers to lock the door because you nudge his attention toward it, and he doesn’t even keep up the pretense of washing his face in the sink. Under the dim lighting he slams his hand against the cool mirror and you watch his face contort in wild agony.

“I’m so weak.”

Usually this is where you agree with him, where you tell him, _yeah, Shirou, you’re weak as anything and don’t deserve to live,_ but you don’t bother to reply. You hover stormily by his right shoulder and try to stop the strange feeling of sadness that comes with not having a reflection apart from your brother’s – you want to see the two of you there instead of just him and your face occasionally overlapping over his.

Shirou finishes waiting for you to say your bit and opens his mouth again. “I’ve – I’ve got to try harder, haven’t I? They can’t keep depending on me if I keep letting them down… What should – what should I—”

His voice is soft and shaky and his thoughts curl into themselves when you try to look at them, hiding away from your dark gaze. You press your lips together into a thin line and take a good long look at the catastrophe you’ve brought about.

You’re trying to _help him!_ You’re just trying to make him see that he can’t let you carry on the way you have any longer, and (you don’t admit to yourself at all that you all but forgot about him completely as you played the match) if he’s going to do anything good in the world he’s got to grow a backbone!

“Shirou,” you say stiffly, recalling with painful clarity your last shot, Desarm’s laughter, the word _reckless_ shouted again and again, your brother’s trembling limbs, and how your victories have never lasted and never will last, “what you need to do is let me take control.”

He turns his gaze up to the mirror and meets eyes that aren’t like his at all.

You take everything about this match, every little moment that made you feel small and hopeless, and bundle them together, tie them up tight with barbed wire, and hold them down. The ache of resentment and disappointment and hatred snags at fabric of the soul you are and cuts holes in it until you are more damage than substance. “Shirou,” you repeat, sounding cruel and cold, “you have not been good enough and you will never fucking be good enough. Just hand over the ball to me and let me deal with these guys.”

Your brother has clapped his hands over his ears. You take a sadistic pleasure in this – at looking at him, watching at him grovel. As pathetic as you can become you will never be as pathetic as your older brother. You will never be as weak as your older brother, even if you are a constant failure who desperately clings to this world because you can’t move on past death. You sharpen your tongue on your teeth and convince yourself you can taste blood.

“Look at you,” – your voice does not tremble, it is _not_ trembling – “you’re an absolute _wreck.”_

Desarm is laughing at you over and over again and he will keep laughing at you until you get Shirou out of the picture and fight him without some weepy little shit holding you back.

“And you can’t handle this because you were built weak. This is the best you’ll ever _get_.”

Shirou takes his hands off his ears and lunges forward, both arms outstretched. He nearly breaks the mirror off its frame. Your face is caught in a spiderweb of cracks. You feel like someone scraped at your insides with a knife and cut out everything that kept you lifted up. You feel so close to nothingness that if you went to sleep you’d dissipate like gas.

You hate this feeling. You swallow it down along with everything else you hate and spit out the regurgitated remains at the person outside the mirror.

“Shirou,” you say, and your voice only catches a little bit, “are you really going to have survived that car crash only to become this?”

 


End file.
